I have a Creative Soundblaster X-Fi Xtreme Gamer sound card, and I recently installed Kubuntu. I used https://help.ubuntu.com/community/OpenSound to get OSS installed, but I still can't figure out how to start using sound. Any help? ;_;
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Re: Help with Enabling Sound
If your motherboard also has on-board sound, you will probably have to go into the BIOS and disable it.
I learned that the hard way.
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Re: Help with Enabling Sound
Depending on what you want to do you may want to follow some of the suggestions here:Originally posted by CHUNKYBOWSER
http://www.opensound.com/wiki/index....ions_for_OSSv4
You have confirmed that you do have sound working by using osstest at the cli? Give me the command line any time, this clicking left, right and centre is all very confusing to an old man like me.
I added ossxmix as a desktop item in one of these newfangled plasmoid thingies. Oh dear, I am showing my age again... This helps you to control the sound level in applications that do not have any sound level control. Forget Kmix for this.
Getting system sounds working was a pain. I had to do several things indicated in the link above. You also have to configure each application manually to use oss, e.g. I have Amarok and mplayer working nicely. It seems that the people from Ubuntu and Kubuntu do not like oss very much. When Ubuntu posts a new kernel update and you install it as a normal update, it breaks your oss installation, so you have to do part of it again. Sigh... Had that under HH.
Anyway, to get the system sounds going you have to install and configure an alternative player, like ogg123 to be the player inside the kde sound system settings. (Confirm that ogg123 works from the command line before you try any further steps in these windows where you click and do not see what is happening...) In this way, I was able to get login and logout sounds. If the other system sounds are not ogg files then you won't have them. For some as yet inexplicable reason, I am still struggling with them Funny thing is that the login sound is not cut off on my system as others have reported with II and as I have found on another system of mine where I am not using oss and xfi. Must have done something right. Also, on my oss/xfi installation I can have only one application that uses the sound at any one time. Something to do with wrapping the dsp device. I think I must have addressed it directly somewhere in all the 1001 places that I needed to configure manually to get the sound to work for oss and xfi. And do not forget that a flash application in a browser continues to occupy the sound device even if you are no longer on a page producing/using sound. You have to entirely close down the browser to free the sound device. In the end I did feel like rapping someone over the knuckles for making an old man suffer like this to listen to his beloved Bach....
If you are still struggling to get the sound working let me know here and I shall try to give you a hand if you want it and if my old hand is not shaking too much to guide a youngster like yourself...
l8rComment
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Re: Help with Enabling Sound
This is my result for OSSTest.
sean@sean-desktop:~$ osstest
Sound subsystem and version: OSS 4.1 (b rc2/200811050233) (0x00040090)
Platform: Linux/x86_64 2.6.27-7-generic #1 SMP Thu Oct 30 04:12:22 UTC 2008
*** Scanning sound adapter #-1 ***
/dev/oss/oss_sbxfi0/pcm0 (audio engine 0): Sound Blaster X-Fi (UAA) output
- Performing audio playback test...
<left> Device returned error: Input/output error
/dev/oss/oss_sbxfi0/pcmin0 (audio engine 1): Sound Blaster X-Fi (UAA) input
- Skipping input only device
*** Some errors were detected during the tests ***Comment
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Re: Help with Enabling Sound
Right, so this proves that the installation is still broken and therefore, it is of no use to fiddle with other things yet, i.e. on the link I provided you in the previous reply. That will be for a later stage.Originally posted by CHUNKYBOWSER
I know you have followed the link on the Ubuntu forum above, which I have as well, but the results were not that successful for me either. I tried as a first step something simpler.
Download the tar package (it seems you are using, like me, a 64 bit installation) for the 64 bit system and 2.6 kernel from here:
http://www.opensound.com/download.cgi
Save it somewhere.
Then from the commandline do as they say in the users guide:
cd /
The above step is very important as you must be at the root level of your directory tree before you unpack the tar file as follows:
sudo tar –jxvf /full path from the root directory to where you have saved the file/name of oss tar file
This should unpack a number of files and directories. If it does not unpack correctly then you may need to change the tar file options -jxvf, which is for a bz2 tar file in this case, which I think is what I had.
Next do the installation, which should also load the modules and set them up to load each time when you boot:
sudo sh /usr/lib/oss/build/install.sh
This should at the end indicate that your XFi card was detected (even though support is still beta).
You then have to reboot your PC though some people will tell you that you simply need to start the sound. I rebooted just to be sure.
Try the osstest again. It would also be necessary to run:
ossinfo -v3
To see what you get. I hope the previous steps that you took from the Ubuntu guide did not break anything else. It is rather difficult to know which of those steps you followed and whether they all worked for you. But as a first effort try these steps above and lets see what it gives. Please also note the advice that was given to you about verifying that the motherboard sound should be disabled in the BIOS, that is if your motherboard has integrated sound.
Let me know how you get along...
l8rComment
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Re: Help with Enabling Sound
Well, this doesn't look good.
sean@sean-desktop:~$ osstest
Sound subsystem and version: OSS 4.0 (b1016/200807242103) (0x00040003)
Platform: Linux/x86_64 2.6.27-7-generic #1 SMP Thu Oct 30 04:12:22 UTC 2008
NOTICE! You don't have any audio devices available.
It looks like your audio hardware was not recognized
by OSS. Please contact 4Front technologies for help
(http://www.opensound.com/support.cgi). Don't forget to
include your soundon.log file to the support request.
sean@sean-desktop:~$ ossinfo -v3
Version info: OSS 4.0 (b1016/200807242103) (0x00040003)
Platform: Linux/x86_64 2.6.27-7-generic #1 SMP Thu Oct 30 04:12:22 UTC 2008 (sean-desktop)
Number of audio devices: 0
Number of audio engines: 0
Number of mixer devices: 0
Device objects
0: osscore0 OSS core services
Mixer devices
Audio devices
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Re: Help with Enabling Sound
Indeed this does not look good. You should have had something like this:Originally posted by CHUNKYBOWSERWell, this doesn't look good.
sean@sean-desktop:~$ osstest
Sound subsystem and version: OSS 4.0 (b1016/200807242103) (0x00040003)
Platform: Linux/x86_64 2.6.27-7-generic #1 SMP Thu Oct 30 04:12:22 UTC 2008
NOTICE! You don't have any audio devices available.
It looks like your audio hardware was not recognized
by OSS. Please contact 4Front technologies for help
(http://www.opensound.com/support.cgi). Don't forget to
include your soundon.log file to the support request.
sean@sean-desktop:~$ ossinfo -v3
Version info: OSS 4.0 (b1016/200807242103) (0x00040003)
Platform: Linux/x86_64 2.6.27-7-generic #1 SMP Thu Oct 30 04:12:22 UTC 2008 (sean-desktop)
Number of audio devices: 0
Number of audio engines: 0
Number of mixer devices: 0
Device objects
0: osscore0 OSS core services
Mixer devices
Audio devices
fermier@lodi:~$ osstest
Sound subsystem and version: OSS 4.0 (b1016/200807242103) (0x00040003)
Platform: Linux/x86_64 2.6.27-7-generic #1 SMP Tue Nov 4 19:33:06 UTC 2008
*** Scanning sound adapter #-1 ***
/dev/oss/sbxfi0/pcm0 (audio engine 0): Sound Blaster X-Fi output
- Performing audio playback test...
<left> OK <right> OK <stereo> OK <measured srate 47562.00 Hz (-0.91%)>
/dev/oss/sbxfi0/pcmin0 (audio engine 1): Sound Blaster X-Fi input
- Skipping input only device
*** All tests completed OK ***
Can you confirm that during the installation procedure right at the end the last four or five lines of printed output indicated that your X-Fi card was detected? And sorry to ask, but you did run this test only once you completed the installation and restarted the PC?
l8r
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Re: Help with Enabling Sound
Oh, here's what is said at the end of the installation. D:
sean@sean-desktop:/$ sudo sh /usr/lib/oss/build/install.sh
OSS build environment set up for REGPARM kernels
Building module osscore
Building module ali5455
Compiling module ali5455 failed
make -C /lib/modules/2.6.27-7-generic/build M=/usr/lib/oss/build modules
make[1]: Entering directory `/usr/src/linux-headers-2.6.27-7-generic'
CC [M] /usr/lib/oss/build/ali5455.o
In file included from /usr/lib/oss/build/ali5455.c:18:
/usr/lib/oss/build/module.inc: In function ‘oss_cmn_err’:
/usr/lib/oss/build/module.inc:233: warning: format not a string literal and no format arguments
In file included from /usr/lib/oss/build/module.inc:245,
from /usr/lib/oss/build/ali5455.c:18:
/usr/lib/oss/build/osscore_symbols.inc: At top level:
/usr/lib/oss/build/osscore_symbols.inc:187: error: redefinition of ‘____versions’
/usr/lib/oss/build/osscore_symbols.inc:1: error: previous definition of ‘____versions’ was here
/usr/lib/oss/build/osscore_symbols.inc:374: error: redefinition of ‘____versions’
/usr/lib/oss/build/osscore_symbols.inc:187: error: previous definition of ‘____versions’ was here
make[2]: *** [/usr/lib/oss/build/ali5455.o] Error 1
make[1]: *** [_module_/usr/lib/oss/build] Error 2
make[1]: Leaving directory `/usr/src/linux-headers-2.6.27-7-generic'
make: *** [default] Error 2
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Re: Help with Enabling Sound
Mmm, most tiresome indeed these compile errors. It was not even able to build the very first module and the one for the X-Fi card is near the end of a rather long list. So no wonder that the sound device was not found.Originally posted by CHUNKYBOWSER
There is one more thing to confirm before I start clutching at straws even in the manual about the installation they say:
"WARNING: Linux 2.6 kernel with kernel sources (or kernel headers), GCC Compiler, Binutils,
GNU Make, GTK/GLIB 2.0 libraries must be installed before you can install OSS."
Try to do a:
sudo apt-get install build-essential
before you try the oss install again. It does seem as if you have the kernel headers installed, however it will at least be necessary that you also confirm that the other bits mentioned above are also installed by using a search in your favourite install manager before you try to install the oss part again. Our systems look very similar so I am not yet giving up hope that it could work for you. It simply seems to me at the moment as if something has not been installed or configured correctly on your system. I hope you have not suffered any of these install crashes that others have reported with II.
Sorry if my replies are not very regular, work is interfering with fun.
l8rComment
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